


One of a Thousand Lifetimes

by JackofSomeTrades



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, General Awkwardness, Mutual Pining, Not enough to change the rating...I think, People being bad at feelings, Some Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 22:59:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11999712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackofSomeTrades/pseuds/JackofSomeTrades
Summary: After Scarif, Jyn spends four days unconscious in the Yavin 4 medbay. She sleeps through the annihilation of Alderaan, the sudden appearance of a young Jedi, and his subsequent near-miraculous destruction of her father’s legacy.When she wakes, groggy and in pain, the amount of information that spills out of Bodhi simply flows over her, as if she were a river-stone in the fast-flowing streams on Lah’mu.The only thing that does stick is that Cassian is alive. Bodhi is smart enough to open with this fact, and repeats it several more times during their one-sided conversation.





	One of a Thousand Lifetimes

**Author's Note:**

> So I’m horrendously late to this party, but I watched Rogue One a while ago and this has just been eating at me. I meant to write a short fix-it, but somehow it spiralled into a 13k monster! All of the below has probably been written before and better in this fandom, but if anyone is still pining for more ways these two could have had more time together, then read on…

After Scarif, Jyn spends four days unconscious in the Yavin 4 medbay. She sleeps through the annihilation of Alderaan, the sudden appearance of a young Jedi, and his subsequent near-miraculous destruction of her father’s legacy.

When she wakes, groggy and in pain, the amount of information that spills out of Bodhi simply flows over her, as if she were a river-stone in the fast-flowing streams on Lah’mu.

The only thing that does stick is that Cassian is alive. Bodhi is smart enough to open with this fact, and repeats it several more times during their one-sided conversation.

“You, on the other hand, gave everyone quite a scare.”

She frowns her unspoken question.

“We thought – you seemed fine on the flight out. Cass and Chirrut were the ones losing blood, so we – we focused on them. You seemed fine…”

Pieces of memory swim towards her, little silvery fish in the stream. Holding Cassian’s hand on the beach. Ripping open syringes and bacta packs in the stolen Lambda. Bodhi wrangling the ship’s controls one-handed as the little ship fought to stay ahead of the Death Star’s blast.

And then the calm of hyperspace, of settling in the co-pilot’s seat and staring numbly at Bodhi’s burnt and blackened face, the sudden waves of dizziness, the way her heartbeat remained stubbornly fast and erratic as she tried to breathe, the stars streaming past slowly fading to black.

“Internal bleeding,” Bodhi supplies.

She focuses on his face. One eye is covered with a patch, his hairline distorted and cheek puckered from the quick’n’dirty healing powers of bacta. Her eyes flick down to his hand gripping hers on the blanket. The skin looks a little pink and new, but it’s whole. His other sleeve half-covers a neat bandage, too small for a fist.

He shrugs. “Even bacta couldn’t save that one. I’m on – on the list for a prosthetic.”

She can’t help but think of Saw, sacrificing pieces of himself to the fight, dying in stages. The two faces blur in her vision as a hand presses her back down on the bed.

“Sleep, Jyn. Everyone’s – everything’s ok.”

Bodhi, Saw, Bodhi _._ Faces swirl in the darkness. Bodhi. Saw. Baze. Chirrut… Papa…… Mama……… Cassian........

 

* * *

 

Chirrut and Baze stop by the following day, bringing news of the plans to relocate to Echo Base. Chirrut is amazingly cheerful for a man in a repulsor-chair. Baze is – Baze is mostly the same, a miracle that Chirrut ascribes to the Force. Baze ascribes it to the high quality of his armour and the poor quality of the faulty Imperial grenade that ‘trooper was holding.

“And so it was just chance that the grenade was faulty, hmm?”

Baze just grunts, and she feels the kyber crystal heavy and warm on her breastbone. She’s not a believer, but there’s something eerie about the way that they’re still breathing. She knows they all feel it – the unfairness of their survival when the others on Scarif, the thousands in Jedha and the millions on Alderaan did not.

She sees why it makes Baze uncomfortable, why Chirrut’s certainty grates. Why them? Why _only_ them?

 

* * *

 

Cassian doesn’t visit. At least, never when she’s conscious. She’s not sure if she expects him to. The idea of waking to find him by her bed makes her heart lurch uncertainly, so it’s probably best that he’s never there. She couldn’t bear the idea of pity lurking behind his smile.

And yet.

And yet each time she opens her eyes, his face is the first thing she looks for.

_I’m not used to people sticking around when things go bad._

He is, she knows, up and walking. Working too – Intelligence are swamped, deluged by information streaming in as the Rebellion’s great fightback, or possibly the rumours of Alderaan’s disappearance, tempts more to join the Alliance’s cause. Whatever Cassian’s doing, it’s clearly too important for him to waste time sitting at her bedside.

Bodhi, however, visits her regularly and although she’d rather die than ask, seems to instinctively know to provide a status update on Cassian’s recovery.

Her memory has improved enough to remember the elevator. It seemed so simple at the time, as if they were the only two people on Scarif, the only two people in the galaxy. She can close her eyes and feel the weight of his arm on her shoulder as they staggered to the beach, the strength of his grip on her hand. If she lies still and concentrates, the metallic tang of blood and sharp sea-salt spray cuts through the antiseptic bitterness of the medical unit and the bright strip lights fade into the soft glow of the burning horizon.

She had known so clearly, so certainly that they were going to die. She had been ready for it, had been perfectly content to die in his arms, this near-stranger who felt like home.

And then Bodhi’s voice, carrying over the roar of the boiling sea as death shone in her eyes.

_“Guys? We stole another ship. I – we really need to go now. J – Jyn? Cass?”_

Only Bodhi could make a heroic rescue sound apologetic.

 

* * *

 

The third time she wakes, she finds Senator Mothma at the end of her bed, calmly reading her datapad.

“Ah, you’re awake,” her visitor observes. “Princess Organa will be disappointed, she’s only just left.”

Jyn blinks as the film of drugged sleep clings to her brain.

“Leia?” she croaks.

“Mmm, yes. The Princess wanted to personally thank the people who gave the Rebellion hope again.”

She shakes some of the fog away and focuses on the message behind the words.

“Does that mean Cassian isn’t in trouble for coming with us?”

The senator smiles. “It’s quite hard to court-martial someone for helping to save the galaxy.” She pauses. “Although, General Draven didn’t initially see it that way.”

“And Bodhi, the others? What about them?”

“Bodhi Rook, Chirrut Îmwe and Baze Malbus have all been publicly thanked for their service to the Alliance. Pilot Rook has accepted a commission in the Rebel Fleet. The Guardians are – considering their next move. We will, of course, respect whatever they decide to do.”

Mothma pauses again.

“Between you and me,” she offers, “I think the presence of a young Jedi on the base is preventing Master Îmwe from thinking about life anywhere else right now.”

Jyn tries really hard not to smile, but given the way the other woman’s face softens, she’s failing.

“You’re not in trouble either, you know.”

The half-smile slips off her face.

Mon Mothma shakes her head. “It’s also quite hard to brand someone an insurrectionist with Imperial connections when they help to save the galaxy.”

“I bet Draven tried.”

Mon Mothma’s jaw tightens almost imperceptibly and then relaxes. One hand smooths the covers at the end of the bed.

“The original arrangement was for you to help us find your father, and then you could go free. Clearly honouring that agreement is the very least we could do. However, there _is_ a sergeant’s position with Rebel Intelligence open to you, should you wish to continue your service to the cause.”

Her mouth falls open a little.

“Intelligence? Draven wants me to be a spy? For _him_? He thinks I’m a criminal.”

“Your record would suggest that _is_ an accurate assessment,” Mon Mothma points out mildly. Jyn doesn’t quite stop her scornful snort in time.

“You’re not so different, you know. General Draven doesn’t trust easily either. But he knows talent when he sees it.”

She weighs the concept of taking orders from Draven against the opportunity to keep an eye on Cassian.

“I’m not a good soldier,” she points out. “I tend not to follow orders.”

Another diplomatic pause.

“It has been suggested that, in certain circumstances, giving our agents more authority to make judgement calls might give us something of an advantage over the Empire. Unpredictability can be an asset.”

Jyn chews on that for a while, the silence stretching out until the senator gracefully unfolds herself from the end of the bed.

“Think about it for a while. You have time to make your choice.”

Her hand finds her mother’s crystal, heavy around her neck.

_The strongest stars have hearts of kyber._

_It’s not a problem if you don’t look up._

“Tell Draven – tell him I’ll do it, but I’m not killing anyone for him,” she says, finally. “Not unless _I_ think it’s necessary.”

The woman in white smiles.

“And tell him that trust goes both ways.”

 

* * *

 

She escapes from the medbay forty-eight hours after she regains consciousness. The new skin from the surgeries stretches and pulls as she tentatively puts weight on her feet. Bodhi is her co-conspirator, helping her down the corridor to her temporary room, procuring her new clothes, helping her into the shower – a real one, not just a sonic.

Feeling properly clean for the first time in weeks feels decadently good. She stands under the water, Bodhi’s good arm at her back and good eye awkwardly fixed on the floor, for as long as her wobbly legs will cope. By the time she’s set up in new-ish clothes, hair neatly braided down her back, she feels closer to human than she’d’ve thought possible when she first opened her eyes after Scarif.

And if she doesn’t feel _alive_ , exactly, for that shower she would have braved far worse than the perfunctory reprimands of the droid sent after her with her Nyex prescription, its neutral tone somehow conveying a weary acceptance of the stubborn lack of self-care common across all variants of Rebellion fighters.

_Your behaviour, Jyn Erso, is continually unexpected._

General Draven doesn’t even bother with a reprimand. A runner delivers a datapad with her transport orders for the planned shift to Echo Base while she’s getting dressed. She passes it over to Bodhi without looking at them.

“You’re shipping out in four days with the rest of us,” he summarises.

“Who’s us?”

His good brow furrows. “You know – _us._ Me, Baze, Chirrut, Cass. The – the team.”

“A team of what?”

Bodhi startles.

“What?”

“A team of what? A blind monk who can’t walk, a one-armed pilot, an old assassin, the thieving daughter of a disgraced Imperial scientist and –,” She falters at the last.

“And a spy who stopped following orders,” Bodhi finishes for her, with a grin. “Even if we’re not on a mission together, we’re still a team, Jyn.”

He grins at her and she manages a weak smile in response, but it’s hard to feel part of a team when one key member is conspicuously absent.

_Two. Two team members._

_I’ll be there for you, Jyn. Cassian said I had to._

A week ago, she was standing around the Alliance council table while various Rebel leaders called her a criminal, doubted her father, and questioned Bodhi’s loyalty to their cause while in the same breath refusing to fight for it themselves.

No-one could have expected the ringleaders of Scarif to come limping back to base, more bodies for an already-overwhelmed medical facility to cope with.

It would have been easier if they’d gone out in a blaze of glory, names to be whispered in myths. It’s easy, with only names, to rub off the rough corners, smooth away the ugly flaws, perfect each of their messy backstories into simple recruitment slogans and glossy propaganda.

 _Welcome home_ , he’d said. And she’d felt it, when it was just their little band of assassins, saboteurs and spies. The ones with dirty hands. _That_ was a home, for those few short hours before the beach. But most of the volunteers of Rogue One never came back. And as kind as Mon Mothma’s eyes are, the pristine robes of the councillors and the rigid military discipline of the commanders don’t feel much like home.

They all should have died on Scarif, slotted neatly into their place in history.

Except Cassian. This place is more than just his home. The Rebellion is his work, his life. Did she really think that knowing her for four days could compete with that?

_I’m not used to people sticking around when things go bad._

She swills down her painkillers with tepid water. The Nyex leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.

“Come on, Rook. Let’s go find some liquor.”

“I’m not sure you’re meant to be drinking on those meds, Jyn.”

She just shrugs. “You planning to tell tales on me, Bodhi?”

“No, it’s just that Cass – Cassian’ll kill me if you get hurt again.”

“Not sure Captain Andor gives a shit, frankly. If he cared so much about my health, he could’ve hauled his arse into the medbay once or twice over the past week.”

“Jyn, that’s – he’s – it’s not…” Bodhi flails for a moment before giving up. “I’m not getting involved. Let’s – let’s find you a drink.”

 

* * *

 

Like most military installations, the Yavin base has an officially-sanctioned watering hole where the officers hang out, and then a bunch of less-official dives that the brass pretend not to know about. Forgotten spaces between barracks and hangars, awkward dark corners serving questionable supplies. It surprises Jyn slightly that after only a week on base, Bodhi steers her unerringly towards an unprepossessing canvas flap in the side of an old container ship.

What surprises her even more is the hush that follows her unsteady entrance.

About forty eyes and a few antennae swivel towards her, all except the milky-blue stare of Chirrut, which remains fixed on his drink as he smiles and calls, “a toast to Jyn Erso!”

Twenty-five drinks are raised without hesitation, her name reverberates around the room, and then, mercifully, the drinkers settle back into their conversations. Two Bothans vacate a table nearby and usher her towards it. She counts the steps to get to it before sinking gratefully into a chair. Bodhi fusses around her for another minute, distracting her so that she doesn’t notice that two beers have magically arrived on the table until he nudges her attention towards a table of Starfighter pilots. They nod briefly and raise their glasses to her.

“Is it always like this?” she asks.

“Well, I mean – I don’t get toasted on entry anymore,” Bodhi admits, looking a bit rueful. “Chirrut says he – he hasn’t paid for a drink yet, but that might be because he’s really good at convincing people to give him stuff for free.”

They share a smile.

“If you want to make this into a bar crawl though, there’s another three – three places we can go where you’ll get the same treatment. I just thought this place would be best because it’s where Cass–,”

He cuts off as her head jerks up to scan the dark room.

“But he’s probably not going to be here for – a while,” her friend finishes apologetically. “He’s been working all hours.”

“I’m sure he has.” Her voice is carefully neutral.

Chirrut floats over, Baze limping along behind. Somehow the monk seems to know every drinker in the place, drawing all the energy in the room until their table is the centre of a whole group that hangs on his retelling of their assault on Scarif, each fighter’s heroism writ large, the tale getting more elaborate and flamboyant through the retelling. Only Luke Skywalker himself could have commanded a more faithful audience.

No-one asks her to help out much – only a few times when Chirrut or Bodhi apply to her for some detail or verification. Cassian must have briefed them all on the events in the tower, she realises, and whether it’s Chirrut’s embellishment or Cassian’s modesty, somehow her own actions take front and centre in the telling. She shifts uncomfortably through the glowing description, stares into the bottle in her hand or fidgets with the bottle of pills in her jacket.

It’s only when the hairs on her neck rise that she looks up.

It takes her a few moments to find him, leaning against the wall at the far edge of the bar. A small, traitorous part of her heart jumps a little, and when she breathes out, a knot of tension in her spine loosens in a way which neither the drugs nor the alcohol have been able to achieve.

He breaks his gaze the moment she meets it, head flicking down to his beer and gesturing to the barman for another.

 _Sutble, Andor,_ she thinks unkindly. _Thought you were meant to be a great spy._

She rolls her eyes and turns to Bodhi, “So tell me more about this Jedi kid, Rook. Is it right that he rescued Princess Leia off the Death Star with a smuggler and a Wookiee?”

One of the pilots nearby jumps in to tell that part of the tale. It’s a good one, odds even worse than Scarif, with daring rescues, aged Jedi knights and encounters with Lord Vader thrown into the mix.

Despite this, her concentration keeps wavering, so that she’s only hearing one word in every ten.

And it’s not that she _wants_ to keep looking at Cassian. It’s just that every time she glances over, his eyes are turned her way. Her skin is practically buzzing from the attention, probably the only thing keeping her alert given the combination of alcohol and Nyex in her system.

The rest of the bar seems unaware of his presence, as if he’s invisible, part of the furniture. He’s anything but invisible to her. His gaze makes her stomach twist around the plain nutrition bar she’d scarfed earlier and her fingers twitch a little around her bottle.

It takes ten minutes for her nervous energy to morph into irritation. She should probably warn Draven, if he wants her to spy for him – patience has never been one of her virtues.

“Andor,” she calls out, and the bar immediately hushes. “Are you going to come over or just watch everyone from the corner?”

Most of their group swings round to look at him. He shrugs and pushes off the wall almost reluctantly. He’s still limping, but he holds himself steady as he winds his way round spindly chairs and wobbly tables.

“Captain Andor,” the nearest soldiers murmur, and glasses are again raised in a half-salute.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” he says mildly, and the group slowly settles back into its hum. But it’s not the same. It’s as if Cassian’s arrival has broken the rhythm of the story, and before long her new companions are disbanding, splintering off across the bar and leaving only the remainder of the Rogues behind.

Bodhi scrapes his stool sideways with one foot and Chirrut manoeuvres his chair around a bit, angling himself to face Baze and leaving Cassian to take the obvious seat next to her.

Cassian sends them a half-smile. “This is why you shouldn’t get promoted into the officer ranks, I suppose.”

She can’t help but stick a boot in. “Why do you even drink here, then? Shouldn’t you be in the officer’s mess with Draven?”

He shrugs. “I’m Intelligence – we don’t really fit in anywhere. And Bolen always has the best beer. I don’t ask questions and he doesn’t kick me out.”

“You rebel.”

He sits without further comment, letting her sarcasm slide off him. Bodhi shifts beside her.

“I’ll just go – just go and get another drink,” he mutters, and escapes to the bar, leaving her basically alone with Cassian. She looks to Baze and Chirrut to rescue her, but they’re engaged in one of their mysterious, near-silent conversations, conducted mainly via half-gestures, grunts and the occasional touch. It’s so intimate it’s almost painful to watch.

She looks down instead and fiddles with the damp label peeling off her bottle. By contrast, Cassian is still; a calm, composed presence in her peripheral vision. She breaks and shoots him a sharp glance. His gaze is fixed on her hands, but his eyes, in the instant before he flicks them up to meet hers, are far away, lit with the yellow glow of Scarif.

“You look good,” he says softly.

She sags back in her seat. “I look clean, you mean. A first, in the time we’ve known each other.”

He smiles. “True.”

She scans his face. Closer now, she can see the dark circles etched around his eyes, the hollowness of his cheeks. He’s looked tired as long as she’s known him, but he looks older than he had on Scarif, as if a weight he’d shrugged off in that elevator has resettled itself on his shoulders. His scruff is worse too, his jawline shadowed darker than she remembers.

She shouldn’t know his face so well, not after four days. Could she describe Bodhi with the same accuracy? Baze?

“You look like hell,” she says bluntly. “Do you not believe in sleep?”

His smile fades, his face settling back to its neutral mask.

“Things have been… difficult, since Alderaan.”

“Did you lose people?”

He sighs. “Some. People I knew, people I respected. We all did. We’ve all lost a lot, recently.”

_Your father would be proud of you, Jyn._

She coughs back the sudden wave of grief.

“Draven wants to enlist me, apparently,” she says, grasping for a safer topic. “He must be desperate.”

His voice is desert-dry. “Don’t look at me, I told him you were a bad influence.”

It’s her turn to smile. “Now I see where K2 got his sense of humour from.”

Cassian looks away swiftly, then down at his beer. She bites her lip.

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

“Do you… are there – back-ups? Or something?”

“I’m not sure. I haven’t found one. I – I left it up to him. It was his choice.”

“He loved you, you know.”

Cassian’s face doesn’t change. “I know.”

Her hand twitches against her bottle, close to where his rest on the table. The urge to reach out and touch him is so strong it’s overwhelming. The tang of salt-spray and blood overlays the taste of beer in her mouth. The kyber crystal pulses warm over her heart.

_Why didn’t you visit me?_

She bites down on the thought abruptly. Across the table, Chirrut tilts his head, stares into space and smiles.

“Anyway,” Cassian stands abruptly. “I need to get back for the latest reports. I’m glad you’re up and about, Jyn.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“I’ll – I’ll see you around.” And then he’s gone.

 

* * *

 

She’s settled in to a small nook she’s found up against the engines of an old cruiser, datapad on her knee, scanning through various reports of the Empire’s movements since the Death Star’s destruction. She’s not sure what she’s looking for, or why, but she gets four-hourly updates from Draven and there’s nothing better to do with her time.

_And Cassian would look disappointed if he found out you hadn’t been reading them._

She shifts as she hears voices below her. She’d assumed this piece of junk wouldn’t be pressed into service, but the old ships are the only ones left on Yavin now. The base is emptying rapidly – by this time tomorrow, she’ll be gone too.

There’s too much laughter for it to be a maintenance crew though. Jyn counts four voices, and peers over the side to see a maintenance engineer, a pilot, and two workers she vaguely recognises from Alliance command corps setting up a makeshift sabacc game under the cruiser wing.

She’s just managed to tune them out when she hears Cassian’s name.

_“Lin, come on. You’ve never volunteered for an extra shift in your life. Stop pretending you’re holier than thou when the only reason you’re doing it is because Captain Andor is on recuperation, which means he’s in the comm centre every day.”_

_“That is not true!”_

_“Really? It’s why_ I _volunteered to be part of the skeleton crew during the transfer. He can brief me_ any _time.”_

 _“What is it with all the command centre crews and Captain Andor?”_ a third voice asks.

The two original voices sigh in unison.

_“The eyes…”_

_“The accent…”_

_“I swear he manages to make exhaustion look hot,”_ the first voice continues. _“Every time he walks past our station I just want to sweep him back to my room and fuck him into some proper sleep.”_

_“And your chances of doing that are…?”_

Jyn realises her palms are stinging, and she consciously loosens her grip on the datapad.

 _“Somewhere below zero,”_ admits the first voice. _“He never gives anyone a second glance. I bet you could do a naked Karuki dance right in front of him and he’d just politely ask when the latest report will be ready.”_

 _“He looks at_ her _, though.”_

_“Who? Erso?”_

Her hands clench around the datapad again.

_“Yeah – didn’t you see the way he was looking at her when she was introduced at the briefing yesterday?”_

_“No, I was stuck at the back.”_

The second voice continues. _“Ugh, you missed out. I would pay good money for someone to stare at me like that. It was – intense.”_

_“Damn. D’you think they’re doing it, then?”_

_“Not sure. I said it was intense, not easy to read.”_

A new voice chips in. “ _I heard his original mission, before Scarif, was to kill her father.”_

_“The Imperial scientist?”_

_“Yup – you can see why that might put a dent in a potential relationship.”_

The screen in front of her eyes swims out of focus suddenly, and the conversation fades back into a low hum. By the time her vision clears, the players are refocused on their game and she’s able to slip away, legs protesting as she drops quietly to the ground from the back fuselage.

_Does he look like a killer?_

_You might as well be a Stormtrooper._

She’d never said that she’d forgiven him. Or asked if he’d forgiven himself.

She wanders aimlessly through the base, shifting this way and that as teams of workers move equipment and supplies, slowly disassembling critical parts of the base before the Empire returns to wipe out Yavin the old-fashioned way.

_Didn’t you see the way he was looking at her?_

She can’t think about the way Cassian looks at her, yesterday or the other night in the bar. She doesn’t want to investigate the ache in her chest when she does, the way her breath catches or her skin heats. Cassian’s eyes are dangerous in a way that the gossiping group under the cruiser could never understand. Cassian’s eyes, which hold the light of Scarif and the darkness of Eadu.

It would be easier if it was just lust, just physical. Something they could burn off in the dark, fucking the fear and the nightmares away for a while.

And it’s not like she hasn’t imagined it, his mouth and hands on her skin, his body pressing her into a bed or against a wall. It’s not like she doesn’t want him. But it’s not as simple as that.

They’d known each other for four days, trusted each other for one, and hadn’t expected to live to the fifth. Four days in which she’d lost both her fathers, such as they were, and he’d lost his best friend. His _only_ friend, she’s realising, who was a bloody _droid_.

He’d saved her life three times.

And he’d tried to kill her father.

And he looks at her in a language she can’t read.

And she can’t stop her damn heart from beating faster every damn time someone makes her think about him.

A beeping noise pulls her back to the corridor. An R2 astromech goes whizzing past, followed by a clanking red TC droid, its hands full of spare parts.

_The Captain says you’re a friend._

Which is another mystery. It makes no sense that the most likely of the Rogues to have survived Scarif didn’t. K2 loved Cassian – or whatever passed for love in his circuits. Why wouldn’t he have left a back-up behind?

The damn R2 unit is back and beeping at her again. They play a weird dance as she tries to navigate herself around it in the narrow corridor. It makes her notice her surroundings for the first time, an unfamiliar part of the base. She’s been walking for ten minutes and her legs are beginning to give out on her.

She scans the nearest wall schematic. _Droid Maintenance and Repairs._ That would explain the flurry of Class 2 and 3 droids around and the distinct lack of organic life forms. She pushes open a door at random to find a set of droids stripping shelves of neatly organised components. Someone with a very poor sense of humour has taped up a suggestive calendar of BD-3000 droids in the corner.

Something clicks into place in her brain.

“Hey,” she calls to the R2 unit, “Did you know K-2SO?”

The R2 trills a flurry of binary, which she just about follows.

“Yeah? Did he ever hang out down here? Did he have a – locker, or something? Where he’d keep personal stuff, or any spares?”

Another array of beeps, and the R2 unit whizzes off down the corridor. She stumbles to keep up, her legs beginning to wobble badly.

“Slow down!”

The R2 unit bumps through a repair room designated for Class 4 droids, along the side of which is –

“Well, what do you know? They _do_ have lockers.”

Except – the one with K2’s designation on it is open and completely empty. She sags back on the table facing the row of rusting doors, the last of her energy drained by the disappointment.

R2 pauses and warbles at her.

“No, I’m not mad at you. It was a long shot, anyway.”

“Excuse me, are you looking for K-2SO’s personal effects?”

She turns to find a battered-about 3PO unit tilted enquiringly at her in the doorway.

“Yeah – do you know where they are?”

“Ah. Well, no. Not exactly.”

She grits her teeth. “Then bugger off.”

“Well, excuse _me_. I’m only trying to help. I said I didn’t know _exactly_ , but he _did_ come down here just before all that business with Scarif.”

“He did?”

“Yes. I remember quite clearly because he bumped right into me. Never said sorry either. That’s the problem with Imperial security droids, they have no manners at _all._ ”

The R2 unit trills at the other droid impatiently.

“I’m getting to it, R2. Yes, I was down here fetching some oil for my joints – the Alliance doesn’t do any real droid maintenance, you know, I’d have rusted to a halt years ago for all they care – and he crashed into me, was _extremely_ rude, and rushed off that way. I’d have mentioned it before, but then we were caught up in that awful business with Master Luke and the Princess and it quite slipped my mind.”

The droid points a tarnished gold arm towards a small cupboard in the back wall. Someone has dumped a load of boxes in front of it, so it’s barely visible. Jyn hauls herself off the workbench and tries ineffectually to shove them out the way.

“A little help here?”

R2 wheels over obligingly, his gold companion less so. (“You could have said _please_.”)

By the time the boxes are out the way, she’s seeing spots in her vision. She blinks them out of the way as she opens the cupboard. It’s tiny, barely a couple of shelves, and empty apart from a small flimsi envelope which is marked: _For the attention of Captain Cassian Andor only._

She tears it open without hesitation.

There’s a small chip case and another piece of hastily printed flimsi inside, which reads:

_Cassian, I calculate there is only a 1.4% chance of Jyn Erso’s suicidal mission to Scarif being successful, and a 0.5% chance that you survive. I have a 4.3% survival probability. The most likely scenario is that none of us survive and the Yavin IV base is destroyed by Galen Erso’s Imperial warship. The confluence of events that would result in you and the Yavin base surviving but my KX unit falling at Scarif is so improbable it is hard to calculate the exact percentage. Therefore my decision to leave this memory chip behind can only be attributed to an emotional glitch. Nevertheless, here we are._

_As I have no interest in being revived unless a) you are alive and b) I can be reinstated into a KX unit, not some awful protocol droid, I have used a chip compatible only with a KX unit in a case imprinted to open for your genetic code._

_I have presumed that you are intelligent enough to realise your room and our lockers will be searched the minute our unauthorised expedition is discovered. The irritating 3PO droid has a 92% likelihood of complaining to others that I bumped into him down here, and I believe you are capable of making the connection to this cupboard and tenacious enough to shift the boxes I used as a basic form of concealment._

_One more thing – I calculate a 74% likelihood that you will put yourself in harm’s way to acquire another KX droid, should you discover this chip. That is an illogical course of action. I am just a droid. You need more friends, Cassian._

It is possibly the first time she’s agreed with K2 on anything.

 

* * *

 

She’s not proud to admit that she sits on the chip and flimsi for five hours, working up the nerve to speak to Cassian. Well, that’s not quite true. For three of those hours, Captain Andor is on shift in Intelligence Command and she’s not cruel enough to drop this on him in public.

But the thought of being alone with him while he processes her discovery, the thought of being alone with him at all is enough for her to loiter in the mess hall long after service has ended, the flimsi and chip case burning a hole in her pocket.

The bustle of the base slowly dies away around her, the usual lean night crews even more skeletal as Echo Base sucks personnel away.

The new command centre there came online two days ago, so Yavin’s equivalent no longer runs a night shift. The place should be empty, but it’s not an enormous surprise to find Cassian is still in there two hours after he should have left, a cold mug of caf and a forlorn nutrition bar wrapper jostling for space with sheets of coded flimsi around his workstation.

He’s so engrossed in his work, she’s able to get quite close before he notices. His face is lit an unhealthy green from the light of the terminal.

She shifts and his head whips round sharply. Her hand clenches around the chip case.

“Jyn?” His voice is rough with fatigue. “What’re you doing down here?”

She swallows. “I could ask you the same question – last shift finished ages ago, right? Didn’t you even take a break for some proper food?”

Something slides across his face before he smooths it away.

“No, I –,” he frowns at the piles of work around him, “must’ve lost track of time.”

She fetches up by his desk and nudges the caf mug with her hip.

“Walk with me to get a fresh one?”

His brow furrows, and she flicks her eyes meaningfully at the monitoring system overhead. He pauses for a second then levers himself out of his seat.

“Sure.”

Her breath seems to come a little easier in the brightly lit hall, the silence closer to companionable as they head towards one of the little water and caf machines placed in alcoves around the base.

“Kriff, this stuff is terrible,” she mutters, leaning back against the tiny sink and staring at the murky liquid swirling in her mug.

The machine finishes dispensing his own sludge and he settles against the opposite alcove wall.

“What’s going on, Jyn?”

Her heart lurches traitorously. When did she turn into such a coward?

“I – um – ended up in Droid Maintenance today,” she says. “Found this.”

She fishes in her pocket and holds the flimsi envelope and the chip out to him. She’s pleased to see her hand is steady, less pleased that she’s looking at her fingers mainly to avoid his eyes.

She senses his frown rather than sees it, and there’s a long pause before his hand snakes into her vision, fingers closing around the envelope.

_“Leave it, Jyn,” he murmurs, his grip tight around her arm, tugging her away from the platform, from the crumpled man in white._

She blinks and pulls her hand away.

He doesn’t even seem to notice, already rummaging in the envelope. He unfolds K2’s note, and she sees his face begin to shift, crumpling a little at the edges. She ducks her head to give him privacy, staring down into the inky caf.

It feels like hours pass before he exhales slowly, loudly, and she finally looks up.

He’s regained his composure, rereading the flimsi as if it’s nothing more than a regular status report pulled off his ‘pad.

“You just found this?” His voice is carefully neutral.

“I was wandering around this afternoon and ended up down there. Thought I’d have a look around his locker and ran into some helpful droids.”

“I see. You’ve read his note, I assume?”

She could probably lie to him, but it’s not worth the effort. He reads the answer off her face easily.

“I didn’t want to give you bad news.”

His eyes soften, crinkling at the edges. “It’s fine, Jyn. K2 wouldn’t expect anything less from you.”

She rolls her eyes.

“It’s lucky you found it today though,” he continues thoughtfully. “We’re both out of here in less than ten hours. No-one would’ve been left to find it.”

“When you get K up and running again, you should tell him to work on his statistical calculations,” she offers. “Given his 92% probability plan almost came to nothing.”

His smile is a little wobbly, but it holds. “Chirrut will say it was the Force that led you to it.”

She groans. “Which is why we’re not going to tell him how it happened.”

“He probably already knows.”

She can’t help smiling back at him, and somehow the distance between them has shrunk in the past minute. His face begins to take on that _intense_ look and she feels her own expression slipping as her heart rate spikes. She drops her eyes back to the memory chip.

“So – um. You don’t need to bleed on the case or anything, to get it to open?”

He glances down at it, then carefully presses a thumb onto a small pad. The case whirs slightly, flashes green, then opens with an audible click. She’s never seen a KX mem-chip before. It’s chunkier than she expected. K2 has neatly labelled it with his full serial code and a timestamp.

“You never told me how you reprogrammed him in the first place,” she says, absently.

His half-smile is back. “With difficulty. He was trying to kill me at the time.”

“And people say _I_ make a poor first impression.”

He huffs a laugh and pushes off the wall. “I’ll buy you a better drink at Bolen’s and tell you the rest, if you’d like?”

“What about your work?”

He shrugs and throws her a sideways glance. “It’ll keep.”

She dumps her caf into the sink as a sign of assent, tries to keep her voice light like his. “Lead on, Captain.”

They only make it ten steps.

“Captain Andor? Oh thank goodness – you weren’t in the comm centre, and I’m sorry but this has just come in from Echo Base and General Draven wants you to look at it immediately.”

The lieutenant running up to them looks barely eighteen and, frankly, a bit overwhelmed. She thrusts a datapad at Cassian and then hovers unnecessarily.

Cassian’s brow furrows as he takes in whatever the datapad shows.

“Ugh. Sorry, Jyn. I need – I have to follow up on this right now.”

He slips the chip case and flimsi into his pocket and pulls out his own datapad, tapping away at it as he disappears off towards the command centre.

The young lieutenant doesn’t follow him. Instead, Jyn can feel the girl staring at her, slightly wide-eyed.

“What?”

“You’re Sergeant Erso, right?”

She tries not to wince at the formal title.

“My brother was one of the Rogue team. Taidu, Taidu Sefla?”

Her stomach drops and twists as if she’s in an X-Wing.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice is clearer than she expected it to be. “He was a brave fighter.”

Lieutenant Sefla ducks her head and blinks for a moment. “Yeah, I know. It still hurts, though.”

She just nods as the words slice through her.

“But, um, he wouldn’t have done it differently. He’d’ve done it a thousand times to keep the Rebellion going. To keep us safe.”

 _Rebellions are built on hope_.

“So, you know – if anyone gives you shit about it. Or it’s a help at all, or whatever. Just – thank you. For doing it. And um, for staying. You and the Princess and Skywalker and Captain Andor and everyone. You’re important, you know? To the rest of us. So – yeah. Ok. Sorry for interrupting you. I’ll just – ok, bye.”

The girl flees almost before her last stumbled words are out, but the subtext hangs in the corridor long after she’s gone.

_Welcome home._

* * *

 

Despite Lieutenant Sefla’s vote of confidence, the seat to her right remains distinctly unoccupied as the transport ship to Hoth fills. She’s taken the closest seat to the cockpit, as a vague show of support for Bodhi’s first sanctioned co-pilot flight for the Alliance. Sentient after sentient climbs aboard and glances her way before carefully taking seats further down the craft. She's not surprised - it's one thing to raise a glass to the notorious Scarif ringleader in the bar, quite another to hang out with her on a fifteen-hour flight.

She keeps her eyes on her datapad, letting the building hum of the ship waft over her as she slowly picks out the common threads in Draven’s briefing notes, the implicit challenge to build a case for a mission. Although she will forever dislike the man, he doesn’t insult her intelligence.

Nevertheless, when Baze and Chirrut appear on the ramp, it doesn’t escape her notice that they _also_ carefully skirt the spare seat, settling themselves opposite her instead. It’s not the most subtle message, particularly given Chirrut’s smile when Cassian swings himself into the passenger section a few minutes before the scheduled departure and collapses into the empty chair.

“Captain Andor,” Chirrut says. “Welcome aboard.”

“Chirrut, Baze. Good to see you both. Hey, _Bodhi_ ,” he yells through the hatch. “Let’s get this bird in the air, hey?”

“Just w – waiting on you, Cassian,” comes the reply. “Orders did say to be on craft fifteen minutes before scheduled departure.”

She catches Cassian’s grin as he settles back in his seat. “Are you going to rat me out to Flight Command?”

“Depends how – how many beers you buy me and Antilles here when we get to Echo Base.”

Cassian’s reply is drowned out by the sudden firing of the old cruiser’s engine, and it’s only when they’ve laboriously climbed out of atmo that the noise in the cabin drops to a reasonable level again.

He rolls his head sideways to catch her eye.

“Morning.”

“You’re in a good mood.”

His mouth lifts lazily into a half-smile. “I was given some good news last night.”

“Draven’s urgent message?”

“No,” he says patiently, “that was just news.”

He leans in and drops his voice a little, mock-conspiratorial. “I realised I never said thank you, Jyn. Or bought you that drink.”

A small part of Jyn’s brain distantly notes that to cope with the scarcity of ships, the Alliance have retrofitted their GR-75 transports to squeeze in extra seats. Neighbours are slotted in almost shoulder to shoulder.

The rest of her attention is taken up by how close Cassian is, the slight press of his thigh against her knee and his arm to hers, the vague scent of clean linen and leather, the half-amused, half-intrigued look in his eyes, his smile slowly spreading as she gropes for a sensible response.

“It’s awfully warm in here, don’t you think?” Chirrut says to Baze, loudly.

It breaks the spell. Air rushes back into her lungs and she turns straight in her seat, narrowing her eyes at Chirrut’s innocent smile.

“No, you didn’t,” she says, finally. “But we have time now. I’m sure we’d all like to hear how you created K2’s winning personality.”

Cassian’s a good storyteller, it turns out, and the tale takes up the first hour of the flight. By the end of the third hour, the general chatter in the cabin has died away. Rations are consumed, the queue for the ‘fresher dies away and around four hours in, Bodhi drops the lighting to night-sim.

She fights sleep for as long as she can, but eventually her datapad battery runs down and with nothing better to do, even the uncomfortable flight seat can’t keep her from nodding off.

She’s not sure how long she’s out before the usual show begins. This time she’s at the controls of a U-Wing, swooping down towards an Imperial placement, locking on to her target just a fraction before she recognises the Eadu landing pad, her lethal gifts tumbling lazily towards her father’s upturned face. And then she’s on the pad with him, blaster pointed at his head, and she tries to stop herself, but she’s a passenger in her own body as she fires and fires again.

The moment stutters and repeats, and it’s her mother before her, hand outstretched, her features crystal clear even though Jyn can’t remember her face when she’s awake.

And she’s screaming, screaming herself hoarse but Saw trained her well and her aim stays true and she keeps firing and people keep falling – Baze, Bodhi, Chirrut, Cassian. And she’s on her knees begging to stop but Krennic’s voice is in her head and his hand is warm on her shoulder, and her finger aches from trying not to shoot, and the smell of blood and burnt flesh fills her mouth and her nose and she can’t breathe and, and – and the pressure on her hand and chest eases, and the relief hits her like a wave.

And she’s on a boat, rocking gently on the sapphire seas of Scarif. The setting sun is like a supernova on the horizon and there’s sea-salt on the breeze. She knows without looking that the Imperial base behind her is burning. She breathes for a while, feels the sun warm on her skin, and she’s completely safe and completely alone.

She trails her hand in the water, lets it trickle through her fingers, listens to the waves breaking on the shore, a calming regular beat that merges into one long, low, familiar rumble as the sun sets and the world darkens and –

She wakes, easing from one state to the other so smoothly that her body doesn’t even react. The reverberation of the ship’s engines simply roll her into wakefulness as awareness floods through her; her muscles heavy and soft, her head weighted against the headrest, and a gentle, steady pressure around her right hand.

Jyn opens her eyes. The ship is dark and still, the only sound above the engines an occasional grunt or wheeze from sleeping soldiers. She slowly tilts her head towards the rest of the ship. The only light is a faint glow from the screen of Cassian’s datapad to her right, just enough to pick out the shape of his fingers intertwined with hers.

He’s not watching her, there's no sign that he’s aware she’s awake. The weight of his palm against hers stays constant and even, his face calm and focused on the code he’s scanning. She watches him for a while, sees him stifle a yawn, shift his shoulders slightly, huff out a soft sigh as he marks out areas of interest one-handed. She watches him until her eyes drift closed and all she’s aware of is her hand in his, and then not even that. And she doesn’t dream for the rest of the flight.

 

* * *

 

Jyn never thought she’d be hot on Hoth, but as she drags herself back to her bunk after a gruelling rehab session, she’s sweating hard. At least the rest of her roommates are on shift, so she won’t have to wait to use the sonic.

Half her thermo-layers are off before she waves her pass at the reader. She kicks her boots through the door while tugging her shirt over her head. It hasn’t even slid fully shut behind her before she’s rolling down her inner and outer leggings at the same time, sighing in relief as the frigid air in her room hits the skin on her thighs.

Someone clears their throat from the corner, and despite the tangle of cloth around her legs she’s halfway to the knife under her pillow before Cassian steps into her line of sight, looking fixedly at the ceiling.

“Kriffing hell, Cassian! What the hell are you doing lurking in my quarters?”

“Sorry! I’m sorry – I wasn’t expecting you to –,” he gestures blindly at her body with one hand.

She glances down at herself and sees her vest wilted to her chest, the cold pricking her breasts into two sharp points through the thin layers. In the silence, her leggings slide into a puddle at her feet.

Cassian is still intently focused on the ceiling.

Jyn pauses. She’s aware that growing up with Saw Gerrera as her guardian meant she missed certain life lessons. In the Partisans, her body was simply a tool to help her complete the assigned work – to be quick, strong, resilient, nimble. No-one had ever suggested that the way she _looked_ was either a benefit or a hindrance, except for Saw’s regular advice, _“keep those eyes down, child. Green sticks in the mind sharper than brown.”_

Which, she reflects now, isn’t always true.

Later, she’d realised that she could’ve looked like the hottest Twi’lek in the galaxy and none of the young Partisans would have dared give her a second glance. It was only beyond the strange safety of Saw’s protection that she’d realised bodies had power unconnected to how hard they could punch or how fast they could run; the power of using one’s face to draw the eye, rather than avoid it. And she’d seen other sentients use that power to devastating effect.

But she’d also learned that power came with a price, that trouble can follow a smile even faster than a blow. So she’d chosen aggression over charm, preferred to be feared rather than desired, collected scars not admirers. And when she’d been curious, lonely or just plain bored, well, it’s not hard to find someone in a bar who’s keen to relieve an itch and isn’t too fussy about the person scratching it.

She’d never regretted her choice until now. Now, when there’s finally a man in front of her worth seducing.

She suppresses a sigh and aims for casual, rolling her leggings off completely before chucking them towards the rest of her discarded clothes. Her thermal sleep-shirt is abandoned on her pillow and she grabs it like a life-line, turning to the wall and inelegantly wrestling her way out of the damp vest and breast-band before tugging it on over her head.

The sleep-shirt is too big for her, like most of the cold-weather gear on the base. The matching pants are comically enormous, so she’s never bothered with them, but the shirt falls to her upper thigh, close enough for an attempt at decency. The loose material pools in her lap as she sits cross-legged on her bed.

Cassian arches an eyebrow at the ceiling.

“For Force’s sake, Cassian, they’re just legs.”

He clenches his jaw once or twice before he drops his chin and settles on to the edge of the bunk across from her. His eyes are fixed very deliberately on her face.

“Aren’t you going to get cold?”

She almost sticks her tongue out at him.

“Not in the next few minutes. I’ve been stuck doing rehab for almost two hours.”

His mouth quirks a little. “Your med-droid says you’re doing well.”

“My med-droid is a sadist.”

That wins her a full smile, which almost makes up for 2-1B’s torture.

“So, Captain Andor, why are you lurking in my room?”

“We’re getting reports of possible Imperial defectors with valuable intel. Potential assets won over to our cause in the wake of Alderaan and Skywalker’s assault on the Death Star.”

She sighs. “You’re going on a recruiting drive?”

“To be more accurate, _we’re_ going on a recruiting drive.”

“Who’s we?”

“You, me, Bodhi as pilot.”

“Has Draven signed off on it?”

He shrugs. “He's my CO - I've briefed him.”

“That isn’t a yes,” she points out.

“I get to pick my teams for missions. That’s the way it’s always worked.”

She thinks it over for a while. “I’m not very persuasive, if you’re taking me and Bodhi along as poster-kids for converting to the cause.”

“That’s ok. You’re terrifying, which is almost as useful.”

“How long would we be gone?”

“A day or two. Three at most.”

She sighs. “Where would we be headed?”

He glances down at a datapad. “Theed. It’s summer in that hemisphere of Naboo now.”

The cold air is beginning to work its way even through the fine fabric of her sleep-shirt, and the fine hairs on her bare legs are beginning to rise against the chill.

Cassian knows how to sell a plan.

She shrugs and stretches her legs out on the bed. “Well, at least it’ll be warm, and the scenery will be better than Hoth.”

Cassian’s face twitches, and he mutters something in Festian she doesn’t catch. She’s suddenly properly cold and painfully aware of how much skin is on show. A wave of embarrassment runs across her skin. She thrusts out a hand for the datapad.

“Fine, give me the details and leave me to the sonic.”

She scrambles off the bed as he rises from the chair and suddenly he’s far too close, the small tablet the only barrier between them.

She means to step back, to move, to do something, but her muscles seem to lock in place. His eyes flick down her body then back up to her face, and all thoughts of cold are lost as her skin heats in the wake of their path.

He stands there for a heartbeat or two longer, looking down at her. A half-breathed curse sweeps warm across her cheek, and then he turns on his heel and escapes through the door.

It hisses shut behind him, and she’s left standing on the cold floor, heart beating hard and a treacherous ache in her lower belly.

“You’re in deep shit, Erso,” she mutters.

 

* * *

 

It’s easy to tell when the mission goes sideways. She feels the shot rather than hears it. The informant’s face doesn’t even change as he crumples to the ground. She drops with him, instinctively searching for cover behind the bales of fabric in the small shop storeroom.

Cassian’s voice comes through the comlink a breath later.

“Abort now, Gamma-2. Stormtroopers are converging on your location. Get out of the shop, keep your head down and meet at rendezvous C.”

“What the hell did you shoot him for?” she hisses, turning towards the window as if she’ll be able to see him from his sniper’s perch. “He had so much more than this damn datachip.”

“You can’t get out of there with him and he wouldn’t have held up to torture,” is the flat reply. “You got as much as you could. He wasn’t careful enough and he’s walked you into a trap. Now go, before you get caught.”

She bites down on her retort as real fear breaks through on his last words.

“What about you?”

“Don’t worry about me, just go!”

She stops to check for a pulse, but Cassian’s shot was sharp and true.

_Does he look like a killer?_

She gently closes the dead man’s eyes, clips the datachip safely inside the false lining of her gown and slips out of the back room of the shop.

It’s deserted inside and the owner is nowhere to be seen – probably the source of the leak. A quick glance out the front shows ‘troopers on both sides, only a couple of shops away.

Her heart is racing and she fights to stop her mind blanking in panic. She’d only been sent in because Cassian had more experience at long-distance surveillance. Now he’s shot a mid-ranking diplomat and the place is crawling with ‘troopers.

She takes a steadying breath and assesses her options. There’ll be ‘troopers coming down the back alley and there’s no internal access to the floor above the shop, but the walls of these old buildings are thin, barely more than plasterboard. The rows of heavy drapes for sale give her good cover to blast a hole and she kicks frantically at the surrounding plaster as she hears the ‘troopers taking up positions outside. As she squeezes through into the adjoining unit, she hears the shop door explode inwards.

The shop next door sells spices, and she almost chokes on the overpowering scent of cinnamon, paprika and saffron in the air. There’s a heavy wooden display case in front of her and she keeps low as she crawls along the back of it. The customers and the owner are clustered around the front displays, spilling out on the street to watch the theatre of a Stormtrooper raid.

It’s a sharp reminder that Naboo is the Emperor’s home planet. The citizens of Onderon or Jedha would have scattered like leaves on a breeze, but this is probably the first Rebel operation in Theed for a long time.

At least it makes it easy for her to step out and join the audience, easing her way through the crowd as if keen for a better view. Once outside the shop, she tugs her thin scarf up over her head and dusts off the tell-tale traces of spice dust on her knees.

She works her way round to the onlookers on the opposite side of the street, so that when the ‘troopers burst out of the fabric and spice shops and start to corral the locals, it’s simple enough to join the frightened stampede as civilians rush to clear the streets.

Once she’s away from the market, she forces her steps to slow. Her heart is in her throat and her stomach churns around an unappetising cocktail of guilt and relief.

_You went up there to kill my father._

_I had every chance to pull the trigger, but did I?_

Well, this time he had.

She can still hear faint shouts and crashes as the Stormtroopers search the market, but after a few more minutes, the streets around her settle back to their usual hum.

She makes two or three more meandering turns without meeting any trouble. ‘Troopers jog past at intervals, but don’t spare her a second glance. The crowds thin as she heads out of the busy market district and winds her way into shabbier residential streets.

The adrenaline buzz has almost subsided as she turns into the quiet street next to the rendezvous destination and walks straight into a KX security droid.

“Scandoc please,” it intones. She looks around. There’s no-one else on the street, not that it means anything – there could be any number of eyes behind dark windows. The presence of the droid so near to the safehouse is too close to be a coincidence.

The hairs on her neck begins to rise as she hands the forged documents over. Her hand inches towards her hidden blaster as she counts the steps to a nearby alleyway.

“Jenevra Kyrell. Your permit of residence code contains an 76% similarity to a deceased female Naboo. I will have to take you into custody. Please do not resist.”

She only has time for one shot. She goes for the droid’s voice box-cum-transmitter, which stops it calling for help. The downside is that this leaves it perfectly capable of using its blaster.

From behind a dumpster in the alleyway, she tries to remember exactly how Cassian had described how he had disabled K2.

“Back panel gets you better access than the front,” she mutters. “Forearm damage will inhibit movement. The master wire to the AV circuits is...”

_Was the AV wire pink or green?_

Some extremely well-aimed blaster fire streams past an inch from her ear.

“Oh, sod it,” she says out loud, then dives forward as more blaster fire pinpoints where her head had been a moment before. Cassian had done it his way, she’d do it hers. At least she has one thing going for her – she has it on good authority that KX droids find her actions difficult to predict.

 

* * *

 

The hardest part, as it turns out, is not disabling a security droid without doing serious damage to its circuits. It’s not even doing it quickly enough to avoid drawing the attention of whoever’s suspicious enough to post a KX droid to patrol.

The _hardest_ part is trying not to kill Cassian when she gets the droid down the safehouse basement steps.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

“So it’s ok for you to abduct a security droid but not for me to do the same?”

“Not when we’re already being hunted by a whole garrison of damn Stormtroopers!”

“Oh right, so you were just buying apples in the market when you picked up K2.”

He grits his teeth.

“I am _trying_ to prevent people getting killed.”

“Well that’s working out really well for our informant, then. Or don’t you count death by friendly fire?”

“That’s not the same, and you know it.”

“Sure it’s not,” she snarls. “How many other people have you killed in the name of the Rebellion? How many who were only trying to help? Who risked their lives to help?”

“Yes!” he shouts. “They were risking their lives – and they paid with them. That’s the risk. It doesn’t matter if it’s me who pulls the trigger or a ‘trooper. If they’re made, they’re made. You can’t save them all. If you can’t understand that, you’ll be no use as a spy.”

“Then why even bring me on this mission? You asked Draven for me, why bother?”

He grits his teeth and looks away. “It was a mistake.”

“A _mistake?_ Yeah, you bet it was a mistake. I should never have taken Draven’s offer in the first place. I only bloody did it to keep an eye on you and Bodhi. You’re right, Cassian. I’m not a spy, not if it means killing people as soon as they stop being useful. Not if it means turning into _you._ ”

She regrets it as soon as she says it. He’s almost shaking with anger, brimful of it, like he had been in the shuttle after Eadu.

“And that’s what you think of me, yes? A cold-blooded killer?”

But his eyes aren’t angry this time. If anything, she’d call it fear.

“It was _him_ or _you_ , Jyn. Can’t you see that? And it doesn’t matter what my orders were, or who he was or what he could have given us. Only one of you was going to make it out and that was going to be you. It will _always_ be you, for me. Always.”

He slumps back against the wall.

“That’s why Draven doesn’t want you on missions with me, Jyn. That’s why this was a mistake.”

In the ringing silence that follows this statement, both of them somehow miss the sound of footsteps coming down the steps into the basement.

“What the fuck?” a voice shouts from behind her. “There’s a KX in here. Get down!”

The blaster is old and their would-be saviour isn’t a great shot, which is why the first shot sizzles harmlessly into a roof beam. The second shot, however, goes straight through Cassian as he throws himself in front of the dormant droid.

 

* * *

 

Being bawled out by Draven isn’t actually that bad, although Bodhi doesn’t help by pointing out that only one of the four informants they were sent to meet ended up dead.

“I sent you to develop four viable sources of information, not to shoot a diplomat, pick up a damn KX unit and bring your captain back unconscious and _bleeding_.”

The main drawback of the debriefing is that it takes up valuable time between them passing Cassian over to the med-droid and getting a report on how serious the damage is.

There’d been a good first aid kit on Bodhi’s ship, and Cassian’s life signs had been stable throughout their dash back to base, but he’d slipped into unconsciousness about thirty minutes after take-off and other than a few slurred sentences, they hadn’t been able to wake him.

By the time she and Bodhi make it down to medbay, Chirrut and Baze are already installed by his bed. Baze’s face would look the same if Cassian had a papercut or a brain tumour, but Chirrut looks cheerful enough, which is enough for her to take a full breath for the first time in five hours.

“2-1B says he’s fine. The blaster nicked a vein, which is why he lost so much blood, but there wasn’t any major organ damage.”

“Are they sure? He was so out of it on the flight.”

Chirrut smiles that infuriating smile. “Perhaps he was tired.”

All four of them seem determined to wait it out, until 2-1B bustles over and informs them that, while Cassian is stable, his cells are showing signs of stress from lack of rest which is slowing his recovery.

“You may come back in the morning,” it advises. “He’ll be kept under sedation until these readings improve.”

After that, the others slowly slope off to crash in their respective bunks. Jyn finds herself trailing the frozen halls.

It’s only now that she understands why Cassian didn’t sit with her while she was out after Scarif. Seeing him sedated is too close to lifeless for comfort, he has none of the small shifts and tells of someone simply asleep.

She knows that she won’t be able to crash until he’s either awake or sleeping normally, but it’s only when she finds herself drifting around the droid maintenance section again that she thinks of something useful to do with her time.

The KX chip is in Cassian’s locker, which is convenient because that’s the first place she looks. His code is absurdly easy to hack, although she’s a bit surprised to find it’s set to the date she was rescued from Wobani.

More surprising is the offer from 2-1B when it catches her surreptitiously borrowing Cassian’s thumb to open the chip case.

“If it will stop you cluttering up the medbay all night, I can provide you with the same reporting protocols as Captain Andor requested when you were in recovery on Yavin IV.”

“Reporting protocols?”

“Certainly. I am equipped to send half-hourly summaries and ad hoc notes of any changes in condition to your requested datapad.”

She looks down at Cassian’s still form. “That – would be useful, actually. Thank you.”

The droid tilts its head at her. “The sedation is only a precaution, you understand. If he’d only take as much interest in his own health as he did in yours, it wouldn’t even be needed.”

“My health?”

“I get a notification when these reports are accessed, Sergeant Erso. After Scarif, Captain Andor checked himself out of medbay two days before it was medically advisable, and then read every report on you within five minutes of receipt until you regained consciousness. It’s not advisable for humans to operate on that little sleep.”

The droid looks at her critically.

“You’re going to do exactly the same thing, aren’t you? I’ll never understand it, humans are most illogical.”

 

* * *

 

By the time she’s done rewiring the KX unit, the chill in the maintenance unit has seeped into her very core, and seven updates have bleeped through from 2-1B. The terse phrasing is almost soothing in its regularity.

_Centax 02:30: Status report. No change to Captain Andor’s condition. Stable life signs. Enforced rest under sedation in operation for a further 4 hours._

She pauses to read the latest one before screwing on the back plate and carefully inserting K2’s memory chip in the correct drive.

And then, because there was a _lot_ of guesswork involved in the last few hours, she grips her kyber crystal in one hand, unholsters her blaster with the other and nudges the drive closed with the muzzle.

_I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force…_

K2’s eyes whir to life and she has approximately 0.5 seconds of relief before she’s slammed against the wall, her blaster slipping out of her grasp as the air is dashed from her lungs. An unyielding metal hand pins her by her throat effortlessly as she scrabbles to breathe.

 _“Where is Cassian?”_ the droid hisses, then recoils slightly and drops her.

She stays down and wheezes, while K2 performs a variety of strange screeches and coughs in the background.

“ _Jyn Erso_ ,” the droid snarls in the same strange falsetto. “ _What have you done to my_ _voice?_ ”

The past thirty-six hours catch up to her in the next breath, and she can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of her, a bone-shaking, hysterical cackle that she can’t seem to stop until K2 picks her up and slaps her, with all the satisfaction that had been missing when he’d done it to Cassian on Jedha.

“Bloody hell, K. That _hurt.”_

“It’s no more than you deserve, Jyn. You made me _female_.”

“Sorry, I’m sorry – the voicebox was surprisingly difficult to repair.”

K2 somehow manages to make his fixed features strongly convey distaste. “I didn’t even know the KX droids _had_ a female voice setting.”

“Stop being so sexist, K. It’s just a voice. I’ll get Cassian to fix it when he’s awake.”

K2 tilts his head and she watches him access the extra data she’d hacked into the chip, a full, unredacted file of all the reports she could gather from the Scarif operation and the subsequent destruction of the Death Star, various snippets about the Hoth transfer, a barebones report of the Theed mission and all but the latest two medical reports on Cassian’s condition from 2-1B.

“I see. Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. I did say –,”

“Yes, yes, a 74% chance of him getting himself shot trying to get another KX unit. In his defence, he is _trying_ to make more friends.”

“I didn’t mean _you_ , Jyn.”

She decides to cut him some slack.

“It’s good to have you back, K. Cassian’ll be awake in a few hours, you can go and see him then.”

She picks up her datapad and heads out the door. It’s almost closed behind her before the droid speaks again.

“You are still unexpected, Jyn Erso.”

 

* * *

 

Despite her best efforts, she passes out about an hour after Cassian shifts from sedation to natural sleep. Exhaustion keeps her under through most of the day, during which time he wakes and, predictably, checks himself out of the medbay to go back to work. Night is falling again by the time she finally knocks on his door. He still looks tired when he slides it open, and for a second she thinks she should have waited ‘til tomorrow. He’s in sleep-thermals, the light, tightly-knit fabric hanging loose from his hips and stretched tight across his shoulders as he leans against the door. Her heart thumps erratically in the silence.

He stares at her for a second as if he’s not really registering, and then his eyes focus and he shrugs back from the door, inviting her in.

She sits on the edge of his bed and looks around. The tiny space is unbearably neat; a spy’s room, not a trace of personality on show.

“K2 stopped by earlier,” he says, eventually.

“Yeah?”

“That voice is –,” he trails off.

“Wrong in every way?”

His mouth quirks. “ _So_ wrong.”

“I know. Do you think he’ll ever forgive me?”

“Probably. Once it’s fixed.”

“On the other hand,” she says, “he’s not thrilled with you either.”

“He told me. Emphatically. I’m getting scolded by a lot of people today.”

“Did you get yelled at by Draven?”

His shoulders lift a little as he hits the locking pad by the door.

“A bit. Not as badly as I expected.”

“Are you banned from going on missions with me?”

“No, not yet.”

“But you don’t want me on your missions.”

He sinks down on the bed and leans back against the wall.

“I’m not sure.” He rolls his head sideways to look at her. “I can’t make promises. It will depend on the mission. Sometimes I’ll have to go alone.”

“I’m not letting you go alone.” The words are out before she’s even finished thinking them.

“ _Letting_ me?”

She shrugs, grasping for an appropriate way to put words to the screaming in her head. “Solo missions are unacceptably dangerous.”

“You sound like K2,” he says.

She snorts. “I’d feel better if he were with you. If – if I can’t be.”

“Do you want to be?”

“Yes.” Her answer comes a bit too quickly to be casual.

He turns back to stare at the opposite wall.

“Even though I’m a cold-blooded killer?”

She pauses. “That wasn’t fair of me. I’m sorry.”

“What if it’s true?”

“It’s _not_. You said it yourself, you could have taken that shot, on – on Eadu. And you didn’t.”

“I did this time.”

She wrestles with this for a while.

“I know. But you did it for your own reasons. Not just to follow an order.”

He shifts back to face her again, closer than before. Her heart rate predictably ticks up.

“I can’t keep you safe,” he admits. “That could be a problem.”

“Well, I can’t keep _you_ safe if I’m stuck on a base. Or if I’m on missions without you.”

He visibly flinches, but doesn’t look away. The silence is thick, like old blood or hot nights. The silence of two gamblers when the stakes have grown too high and the final cards are being played.

“Why me?” he asks, finally.

She folds, her eyes flicking away to the wall behind him.

“Because.” She pauses and tries again. “Because you disobey orders when they’re wrong. Because you let me keep my blaster. Because you took that shot on the tower, and didn’t let me kill him after. Because you kept coming back for me.”

His nearness is sucking all the air out of the room. She’s already said too much, but the words don’t stop, spilling out of her mouth without any permission from her brain. Perhaps this is how all his informants feel, the giddy relief of confession.

“Because you held my hand while I slept. Because you get too close and it makes me want –,” her courage takes her to the edge and then drops her short, “– you know.”

“Want what?”

Her face is flaming.

“ _Cassian._ ”

And then he’s so close that she can’t breathe, can’t think, and he’s turning her face to his and his eyes are singing with joy and they’re in the elevator, her stomach swooping as the car drops like a stone.

“ _Mi alma_ , you think this is one-sided?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure _I_ don’t have Command Centre workers lusting after me,” she mumbles.

He laughs.

“Starfighter Corps seem to spend half their time debating if you are more beautiful than intimidating. I’ve lost count of the times I almost started fights with those _pendejos_.”

“Only _almost_?”

He smiles, wide and broad. “I have never met anyone like you, Jyn Erso.”

She’s about to protest, because after her humiliating little speech that’s far too ambivalent a compliment to be considered fair, but then he kisses her.

He kisses her, and everything else fades away.

And he tastes of salt-spray and blaster smoke, his hair runs soft as sand through her fingers, and his touch is like the sun on her skin.

 

* * *

 

Cassian’s bed is inexplicably more comfortable than hers. He laughs when she tells him so, and claims, like the private room, it’s a perk of his rank.

“We can swap, if you like,” he offers, generously.

“I wouldn’t do that to you. One of my roommates snores.”

His fingers trace patterns on her arm, on her hip. “If you’re lucky, I might let you stay every so often.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure, every time the heat goes out.”

He’s still recovering, so she takes most of the weight out of her punch.

_“Ow.”_

“Don’t be a baby.”

He smiles into her hair.

“We’re going to keep having these arguments, aren’t we? When a mission goes wrong.”

She shrugs. “As long as we’re both around to argue with each other, I won’t mind.”

It takes him a moment to respond. “I wish I could promise you that.”

“I know.”

She shifts a little, burrows further into his side. He’s not a big man but he’s hard, made of durasteel. She’d back him against ten larger men. If Cassian falls, it’s because every possible chance has been spent.

“We should have died on that beach, you know,” she says.

He sighs, the breath rustling the top of her hair.

“I know.”

She twists to look up at him in surprise.

He angles his face down to meet hers, those expressive eyes soft and tired. “I dream about us dying every night – Bodhi doesn’t make it down the ramp before the grenade blows, Chirrut takes a direct hit, Baze’s Stormtrooper pulls a live grenade not a dud.”

“And us?”

“And we die on that beach together.”

She smiles. “I dream about that too, sometimes.”

His face crumples a little.

“It’s a nice dream,” she admits. “It feels – calm. Safe.”

His arm tightens around her, pulling her closer.

“I talked to Chirrut about it, a while back.”

“Let me guess,” she sighs, “he said, ‘ _Trust the Force_.’”

Cassian smiles. “Actually, no. He said – he said that everything happens somewhere. That there are as many realities as there are stars in the sky. Somewhere, we died on that beach. Somewhere, the Empire wins. But then, somewhere, the Empire never happens at all.”

She thinks about it for a moment. “Somewhere, Krennic never comes for my father and I grow up with both parents. And somewhere, your family isn’t killed.”

“And how many somewheres where Cassian and Jyn never meet?” he asks.

It’s her turn to hug him a little tighter, pressing her face to his chest so that his steady heartbeats pulse against her cheek.

“That’s what makes the beach dream so good,” she admits. “I have you. And nothing in the galaxy can ever take you from me. Just for that second, I have everything I need.”

He’s silent for a moment, and she pulls back a little to see his face. He’s looking at her with the darkness of Eadu and the blinding brightness of Scarif, and all the stars in the galaxy burn to dust as she lives a thousand lifetimes in his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing in this ‘verse and I’d never pretend to be a Star Wars expert, so I’m sure I’ve made mistakes. If you spot something, please be kind (but feel free to let me know if it’s egregious!) Comments make my day, so if you liked what you just read, please consider letting me know!


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